Application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights by Polish Courts and the Jurisprudence of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal

This text presents the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights by Polish courts since the entry into force of the Charter in December 2009. As the Charter is an element of the ‘external’ constitution for the Republic of Poland, similar to the European Convention on Human Rights, the practice of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal is of particular importance in this analysis. Hence the referral to the Charter by common and administrative courts is rather briefl y described and the main focus of the text is on the broader analysis of the way of and reasons for using the Charter by the Constitutional Tribunal. While the Charter is not treated as a model for the hierarchical analysis of norms in cases of constitutional complaints, it can however be offered as such a model in cases of abstract control and legal questions fi led by the courts. The use of the Charter might be further clarifi ed by an answer of the Court of Justice of the European Union to the fi rst request for preliminary ruling made by the Polish Constitutional Tribunal in case C-390/15 RPO.